I’m pleased to be a contributor. Jon Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment (and a lively presence on Twitter as @globalecoguy), asked me to write an occasional opinion piece about business and sustainability. My first one looks at some issues raised by Bill McKibben’s campaign to get institutional investors to divest from fossil fuel companies, and how individual investors might want to think about divesting. Here’s how it begins:

In the investing world, past performance is no guarantee of future returns. When it comes to climate science, predicting the future is more straightforward: If we burn all of the fossil fuels on the books of the big oil, coal and gas companies—2,795 gigatons, to be precise—or even most of them, we’re headed for trouble. Bill McKibben, the writer and environmental activist, calls this global warming’s terrifying new math. In response, McKibben and his allies at 350.org have launched a coast-to-coast campaign to persuade colleges, universities, churches, foundations and, yes, people like you and me, to stop investing in the fossil fuel industry.

“It does not make sense,” McKibben says, “to invest my retirement money in a company whose business plan means that there won’t be an earth to retire on.”

His logic is unassailable. But divestment alone won’t deliver the change we need—only political action can do that. And, while it is possible to cleanse your personal portfolio of fossil fuels, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Here’s why.

You can read the rest of the column here. I’m going to dive into this topic in more depth here on the blog in a day or two.

Literally, he’s wrong. There will be an earth for some people to retire on. But if we burn all of the reserves on the books of the big oil and gas companies, we will do incalculable damage. Don’t even think about retiring to the Florida coast, for example.